In Memorium
We shall never hear their words again, nor feel their heartbeats. Their presence is gone from our lives, leaving a hole that can never be filled.
Their sacrifice echoes down through our history, at first individual but slowly coming together to form one great whole; a legacy of forsaken personal futures so that we who remained could experience what they never would.
We cannot comprehend their sacrifice, we can only live as to be worthy of it.
But what they have done we cannot understand, unless we have lived through the nightmares that would have accompanied them had they lived. I wonder what those who have given their lives would think of the way we choose to spend ours?
Would they look upon us with a sense of sorrow as they see how small we sometimes think, or would they enjoy a sense of pride as we struggle to live up to the promise that they saw in us.
What would our fallen wish for us to know?
I’ve tried to think about that this weekend, and I hope you will forgive me any trespass if I try to phrase the words I think they would say to us. I think they would try to help us understand the precious gift we are given every morning, which they no longer enjoy; that of a new dawn full of countless opportunities.
I believe they would tell us to live this day with courage and gratitude, balancing the two in a dance of deference and desire.
For the days they paid for should be spent in charity and caring.
I expect that they would tell us to hold our loved ones close, and the cherish every moment with them. Since they can no longer be there, I believe they would ask us to cherish their loved ones as well, and try to help in any way that we can.
Not that we can ever make right what time, fate and the universe has made wrong, but in understanding that love and compassion can reduce their loss, and make their days just a little brighter in the midst of the darkness of all that has been taken from them.
Because for every soul that paid with the rest of their lives, there are those whose lives will never know rest because of that price which was paid.
And I think those who have gone on before us, before their time, would implore us to show a greater love and kindness for all those for whom they sacrificed.
In the moment of their passing, as they moved on beyond humanity, I like to believe that they would champion the humanity of all who they were leaving behind, for their sacrifice and their service was given in the belief that we are worth fighting for
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Surely a people who are worth dying for are worthy of being cared for and loved by the living.
On this Memorial Day, I wish to add my own small voice of gratitude to those whose names may never be known to me, yet whose lives have immeasurably enriched my own. We can never repay the debt to those who have fallen, and so we must pay it forward in our service to the living.
May we who remain be worthy of the sacrifice of those who have given the rest of their days for us.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
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